Erast Petrovich’s first reaction was purely nervous – he glanced at his watch. It showed eighteen minutes past two.
If it is eighteen
Or nineteen minutes past two -
What’s the difference?
THE SCALES FALL FROM HIS EYES
For a few minutes the burglars who had fallen into a trap behaved in a perfectly normal and predictable way – they hammered on the impervious partition with their fists, tried to find a joint in the wall with their fingers and searched for some kind of knob or lever. Then Erast Petrovich left all the fussing about to his partner and sat down on the floor with his legs crossed.
‘It’s p-pointless,’ he said in a steady voice. ‘There isn’t any lever in here.’
‘But the door closed somehow! No one came into the office, we would have heard them – I closed the catch!’
Erast Petrovich explained.
‘A timing mechanism. Set to twenty minutes. I’ve read about doors like this. They use them in large bank safes and armoured repositories – where the loot can’t be carried out very quickly. Only the owner knows how much time he has before the spring is activated, but anyone who breaks in gets caught. Calm down, Asagawa. We’re not going to get out of here.’
The inspector sat down as well, right in the corner.
‘Never mind,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We’ll sit here until the morning, then let them arrest us. We have something to show the authorities.’
‘No one will arrest us. In the morning Suga will come to work and from the disorder in the office, he’ll realise that he’s had uninvited visitors. From the chair under the crucifixion, he’ll realise that there are mice in the trap. And he’ll leave us here to die of thirst. I must admit, I’ve always been afraid of dying that way…’
The words were spoken, however, without any particular feeling. The poisoning of heart and brain had evidently already affected the instinct of self-preservation. So be it, then, thirst it is, Erast Petrovich thought languidly. What difference does it make, in the end?
Fatalism is an infectious thing. Asagawa looked at the waning flame in his lamp and said thoughtfully:
‘Don’t worry. We won’t have time to die of thirst. We’ll suffocate before Suga arrives. There’s only enough air here for four hours.’
For a while they sat there without speaking, each of them alone with his own thoughts. Erast Petrovich, for instance, thought about something rather strange. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps none of this really existed at all. The events of the last ten days had been too incredible, and he himself had behaved too absurdly – it was all delirious nonsense. Either a lingering dream or the monstrous visions of the afterlife. After all, no one really knew what happened to a person’s soul when it separated from the body. What if there were phantom-like processes that occurred, similar to dreaming? None of it had really happened: not the chase after the faceless assassin, or the pavilion at night beside the pond. In reality, Erast Petrovich’s life had been cut short at the moment when the grey and brown mamusi fixed its beady stare on his face while he was lying helpless. Or even earlier – when he walked into his bedroom and saw the old Japanese man smiling…
Nonsense, the titular counsellor told himself with a shudder.
Asagawa shuddered too – his thoughts had clearly also taken a wrong turning.
‘There’s no point in just sitting here,’ said the inspector, getting up. ‘We still have our duty to perform.’
‘But what can we do?’
‘Tear out Suga’s sting. Destroy the archive.’
Asagawa took several files down off the shelves, carried them into his corner and started tearing the sheets of paper into tiny little scraps.
‘It would be better to burn them, of course, but there isn’t enough oxygen,’ he murmured absentmindedly.
The titular counsellor carried on sitting for a little while, then got up to help. He took a file and handed it to Asagawa, who continued his work of methodical destruction. The paper ripped with a sharp sound and the heap of rubbish in the corner gradually grew higher.
It was getting stuffy. Fine drops of sweat sprang out on the vice-consul’s forehead.
‘I don’t like dying of suffocation,’ he said. ‘Better a bullet through the temple.’
‘Yes?’ Asagawa said thoughtfully. ‘I think I’d rather suffocate. Shooting yourself is not the Japanese way. It’s noisy, and it gives you no chance to feel yourself dying…’
‘That is obviously a fundamental difference between the European and Japanese cultures…’ the titular counsellor began profoundly, but this highly interesting discussion was not fated to continue.
Somewhere above them there was a quiet whistle and bluish tongues of trembling flame sprang out of the gas brackets. The secret room was suddenly brightly lit.
Erast Petrovich looked round, raised his head and saw a tiny opening that had appeared in the wall just below the ceiling. A slanting eye was peering out of it at the titular counsellor.
He heard a muffled laugh, and a familiar voice said in English:
‘Now there’s a surprise. I was expecting anyone at all, but not Mr Russian Diplomat. I knew you were an enterprising and adventurous man, Fandorin-san, but this is really…’
Suga! But how had he found out?
The vice-consul did not speak, merely greedily gulping in the air that was seeping into the cramped space through the narrow opening.
‘Who told you about my secret place?’ the intendant of police asked, and went on without waiting for an answer. ‘The only people apart from me who knew of its existence were the architect Schmidt, two stonemasons and one carpenter. But they all drowned… Well, I am positively intrigued!’
The most important thing, Erast Petrovich told himself, is not to glance sideways into the corner where Asagawa is hiding. Suga can’t see him, he’s sure that I’m here alone.
And he also thought what a pity it was that he hadn’t taken a few lessons from Doronin in the art of battojiutsu – drawing a weapon a high speed. He could have grabbed his Herstal with a lightning-fast gesture and put a bullet in the bridge of this villain’s nose. With the little window open they wouldn’t suffocate before the morning, and when the morning came, people would arrive and free the prisoners from the trap.
‘And you? How did you know I was here?’ Fandorin asked to distract the intendant’s attention, while he put his hands behind his back and stretched slightly, as if his shoulders were cramped. His fingers found the flat holster.
Out of the corner of his eye he caught a movement in the corner – apparently the inspector was also taking out his weapon. But what was the point? He couldn’t hit the little window from there, and Suga would hide at the slightest suspicious rustle.
‘The official apartment of the head of police is close by here. The signal went off,’ Suga explained willingly, even proudly. This may be Asia, but we try to keep up with the latest inventions of progress. I’ve satisfied your curiosity, now you satisfy mine.’
‘Gladly,’ the titular counsellor said with a smile and fired.
He fired from the hip, without wasting any time on aiming, but the intendant’s reactions were impeccable – he disappeared from the window and the incredibly lucky shot (it didn’t hit the wall, but passed straight through the opening) went to waste.
Erast Petrovich was deafened by the roar. He slapped the left side of his head, then the right. The ringing became quieter and he heard Suga’s voice:
‘… something of the kind and I was on my guard. If you behave impolitely and don’t answer my questions, I’ll close the hatch now and come back in two days to collect the body.’
Asagawa got up without making a sound and pressed his back against the bookshelves. He was holding his revolver at the ready, but Suga wouldn’t present himself as a target again now, that was quite clear.